The Role of Servant Leadership in Church Workers’ Commitment

The study was an examination of the role of servant leadership in worker's commitment to the Xander church (Pseudonym). In Xander church, workers' commitment is shallow, as reflected in attendance and service. A cross-sectional design was used to study 38workers using nonprobability purposive sampling. The hypotheses were: H1 Is there a statistically significant relationship between servant leader behaviors and workers' commitment? H2: Is there a statistically significant relationship between the servant leadership behavior of empowerment and church workers' reported commitment due to the length of stay? The eight dimensions servant leadership survey instrument measured servant leadership, while workers' commitment was measured with the 15-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. The data were analyzed with Spearman’s Rho correlation because of a small sample size. The results revealed that servant leadership predicted commitment, and the servant leadership survey element, behavior empowerment, was not predicted by the worker's length of stay. I recommend that further research be conducted to ascertain reasons for a low commitment since servant leadership behavior impacted commitment. Keywords: Servant leadership, commitment, church workers, empowerment, and leadership behavior.

Essential Workers, Essential Services? Leitourgia in Light of Lockdown

Within days of the outbreak of COVID-19, the language of “essential work” and “essential workers” became commonplace in public discourse. “Church workers” and their in-person liturgical services were largely deemed “non-essential”, and most assemblies shifted worship to online platforms. While some reflection on this virtual “church work” has appeared in the intervening months, there has been less evaluation of the gathered assembly’s absence from the public square, along with the contribution its liturgical work might offer in interpreting the pandemic and its effects. This essay imagines a post-COVID-19 agenda for liturgical studies that focuses on a recovery of Christian liturgy as public, in-person, and “essential” service done for the sake of the polis—a public example of “church doing world”—that proposes a countersign to the inequalities of contemporary consumer culture laid bare in these last months. It begins by engaging in dialogue with the leitourgia of groups who insisted on the essential nature of their public service, in particular the public protests against police violence that marked the summer of 2020. In doing so, it seeks ways liturgical assemblies might better propose a “public theology” of God’s work in the world understood as the concursus Dei, the divine accompanying of creation and humanity within it.

Effect of Rewards and Compensation on Job Satisfaction among Church Workers in Nakuru West Sub County

The main purpose of the study was to determine how reward and compensation affect job satisfaction among church workers in Nakuru West Sub County. Herzberg’s Two-Factor and the expectancy theories guided the study. The study employed descriptive survey research design. The target population for the study were the pastoral and other church employees in all the 4 mainstream churches in Nakuru West Sub County. These churches have combined staff population of 188 staff comprising of the pastors, evangelists, secretaries, administrators, caretakers and other staffs recruited depending on the needs and capability of the churches. The study used the primary data where questionnaires were used to collect data after being subjected to Cronbach test for reliability and judgmental test for validity. The study conducted a piloting study, Data was analysed using SPSS version and will initially be analysed using descriptive statistics, and thereon, inferential statistics such Pearson product moment correlation and multiple linear regression analysis. Results was presented in the form of tables and figures. From the research findings, the study concluded that, the study found that factors including salary, benefits, organisational policies, supervision, working conditions and relationships. On the other hand, motivators such as achievement, recognition, promotion, responsibility and work itself promote motivation and consequently satisfaction. The study concludes that employer should demonstrate equal and fair employee handling mechanisms based on their performance evaluation.

Establishing How Church Leadership Affects Job Satisfaction among Church Workers in Nakuru West Sub County.

The main purpose of the study was to establish how church leadership affects job satisfaction among church workers in Nakuru West Sub County. Herzberg’s Two-Factor and the expectancy theories guided the study. The study employed descriptive survey research design. The target population for the study were the pastoral and other church employees in all the 4 mainstream churches in Nakuru West Sub County. These churches have combined staff population of 188 staff comprising of the pastors, evangelists, secretaries, administrators, caretakers and other staffs recruited depending on the needs and capability of the churches. The study used the primary data where questionnaires were used to collect data after being subjected to Cronbach test for reliability and judgmental test for validity. The study conducted a piloting study, Data was analysed using SPSS version and will initially be analysed using descriptive statistics, and thereon, inferential statistics such Pearson product moment correlation and multiple linear regression analysis. Results was presented in the form of tables and figures. From the research findings, it can be concluded that church leadership encourages teamwork among employee leadership. The study recommended that church leadership do more effort on teamwork so they may able to share and integrate individual ideas for the betterment of job performance.

Health and Integrative Wellness: Mapping Wellness and Its Cultural Psychology in Contemporary Africa

The present work probes the ethnocultural psychology of African people in the creative negotiations of wellness across healing spaces. Using data drawn from ethnographic method, the research engages the cultural dynamics in the emerging ethnomedical conversations among 250 sick clients of African healing shrines, over 50 contemporary practitioners of African healing shrines, 40 biomedical doctors and nurses, and 40 church workers/Christian healers in Nigeria and Ghana. The findings of this research suggest that there are dialogic paths of ecumenical interaction, active routes of referral systems, and social contours of transborder spiritualities across contemporary African healing spaces.

Prophetic Martyrdom in Modern Latin America

Following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), over a thousand priests and religious sisters and brothers were exiled, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered in Latin America by authoritarian governments. A much larger number of lay Church workers were also incarcerated, brutalized, or killed. Most suffered or died because, following the ideals of Vatican II and the Second Latin American Bishops Conference at Medellín, Colombia (1968), they committed themselves to the amelioration of the marginalized in their countries, even though they were fully aware that to do so placed their lives in great peril. This chapter treats a select number—mostly priests and nuns—who were killed because of their prophetic devotion to the poor. It is limited to the nations of Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Central America. It also touches on the bitter divisions that resulted in the Church as a consequence of this new religious activism. Finally, it demonstrates why the deaths of so many religious-based social justice activists forced the institutional Catholic Church to reexamine its outdated criteria for martyrdom.

The Norwegian Pentecostal Mission’s work in Kenya between 1955 and 1984: A historical perspective

This article attempts to reconstruct an early history of the Norwegian Pentecostal Mission’s (NPM) work in Kenya. The Free Pentecostal Church (FPC), known as the Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya (FPFK) until April 2018, was born out of a 1984 merger between the Swedish Free Mission and the NPM. The Norwegians came earlier in 1955, whereas their Scandinavian counterparts arrived in 1960. The article contests that during the period under review, the first 29 years of NPM’s presence in Kenya, the NPM was characterised by a fast-growing enthusiasm in establishing mission stations and local churches through evangelism and social work activities in education, medical care, orphanages, midwifery and compassionate handouts of commodities to villagers. These would be overtaken by the efforts to merge Swedish and Norwegian interests and establishments into one denomination in 1976 and the move towards nationalising the FPFK by handing over church leadership to the Kenyans by 1997. The article contests that the zeal and successes of the missionaries and local church workers in sowing the seeds of the gospel were checked by cultural and socio-economic setbacks in Kenya’s colonial context as well as the nationalisation process. The increased presence of Norwegian missionaries in Kenya during the 1960s were largely motivated by, among other factors, the channelling of Norwegian government aid monies to foreign development regions through missionary agencies and the imminent independence of the East African state.

Leading a Community Engagement Approach for Integral Mission in Central Africa and Southeast Asia

Community engagement is essential in global health mission organizations in order to effectively integrate physical and spiritual health. I experienced a progression in understanding faith-based community engagement in global health during my time as a health director in central Africa and Southeast Asia. The Facilitator phase of this progression leads to understanding the systems and networks as described by the Social-Ecological Model (SEM) and the Holistic Worldview Analysis (HWVA) model. Together, these can be used to guide church workers, faith-based public health practitioners, and development leaders in taking a holistic approach to improving community health and well-being in a way that learns from my experience and focuses on the Facilitator phase as the most effective. Integral mission understands that the physical and spiritual determinants of health are inseparable but is often challenged by diverse partnerships, community beliefs, and assumptions influencing cross-cultural health initiatives. Together, the SEM and HWVA models support a holistic community engagement strategy for integral mission to take place.